


Go Go Paladins of Voltron

by hufflepirate



Series: Platonic VLD Week [10]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Power Rangers Fusion, Explosions, Friendship, Gen, Meet-Cute, The Abandoned Mineshaft Outside of Town, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 13:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12631821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: Shiro gave up everything, including his spot at the Garrison, to look after his dying mother.  Now his mother is gone and he's alone — until he meets four teenagers with attitude, a set of mysterious keys, and maybe, just maybe a purpose.Written for platonicvldweek 3, for the prompt Alternate Reality/Free, so it's not QUITE a Power Rangers Fusion AU, but it is the meet cute from Power Rangers (2017), but with Voltron. We're calling it an alternate reality, not an alternate universe, because they're gonna end up in space doing their space thing, just... a little differently.(Marked complete because I like the ending ok as it is and don't have time to write this as a multichapter fic right now.)





	Go Go Paladins of Voltron

Shiro closed his eyes, soaking in the last of the sunshine. The metal of the abandoned train car was warm against his back, radiating the heat of the day back at him even as the air got cooler around him. It was as comforting now as it had always been, but it couldn't do much to calm the storm of emotions he was feeling today.

He'd started coming up here when his mom was still sick, just to get away for a while, but now that he was on his own, it was just a place to go that seemed like his. Not that he'd actually been alone here for a while. Not since Crazy Girl had started showing up with her backpack full of weird sensors and things and propping them up on a rock at the top of the ridge.

Today he was almost hoping she'd show up. He'd never talked to her, but now that it was the actual anniversary of his mother's death, he both did and didn't want to be alone, and watching Crazy Girl from his usual spot on top of his box car seemed like the perfect compromise.

He opened his eyes again, rolling over to check the path that led up to the old abandoned gold mine. Crazy Girl wasn't there, but somebody was. Two somebodies. The boy in the red jacket looked familiar, and then he put it together - Keith Kogane. He'd known Keith some when they were younger. Before he'd had to drop out of the Garrison to look after his mother. Before Keith had become an Olympic-level fencer and the Garrison's golden boy.

Not that Keith was the golden boy now. Not after he'd gotten arrested for taking a joyride in an experimental jet. Not after he'd broken his arm crashing the jet and ruined his chances of making it to this year's Olympics. Not after he'd gotten put on triple probation — which he was probably breaking, now, just by being here.

Shiro hadn't met the boy Keith was with, but he was clearly talking, from the way Keith's ear was half turned toward him as they walked along, carrying a large trunk between them. The other boy was bigger than Keith was and presumably had two good arms, so if he needed help with the trunk, it must be heavy. Shiro sat up, pulling his legs up onto the top of the box car and crossing them as he watched Keith and the other boy make their way toward the mine's cave system.

He didn't realize until Keith and the stranger stopped outside a cave that Crazy Girl was here, too, propped up in her usual spot a little way away from them. They probably couldn't even see that she was there, with her usual series of weird tiny satellite dishes pointed toward the sky.

Shiro bit his lip. Maybe he should go say hi to Keith. Maybe he should go meet Crazy Girl and find out what her actual name was. Maybe Keith being here was some kind of sign that it was time to get out there and stop feeling sorry for himself.

Keith and the stranger put down their trunk and talked to each other for a while. The other boy was gesturing toward the cave, but Keith kept pointing over his shoulder like he wanted to get out of here. Finally, the other boy nodded, and Keith turned on his heel and walked away.

Shiro made a decision. He was going. He could catch Keith before the younger boy made it too far down the path, and now he didn't have to talk to any strangers, but he also didn't have to be alone. He would be going home to an empty house. He might as well be social while he was out.

He was halfway to the path when an explosion rocked the mine, echoing off the stone. Keith turned around, sprinting back toward the cave, and Shiro followed him. Another boy seemed to come out of nowhere, skidding out of the woods and pulling his jacket on over his blue and white baseball tee.

By the time Shiro caught up, the boy who had come with Keith had stumbled out of the cave, dusty and covered in soot, and all three boys were yelling at each other.

"Hey!" he shouted when he got close enough, "What's going on?"

Keith whirled around, clearly ready to loop him into the fight, too, then stopped dead. "Shiro?"

"Who's Shiro?" the boy from the woods asked.

"Well, obviously _that_ 's Shiro," answered the boy who'd come with Keith. "Hi. I'm Hunk. Sorry for the noise."

"The _noise_?" the other boy answered, "You almost _blew up the mountain_ next to my favorite swimming hole and you're apologizing for the _noise_?"

"I'm sorry, Lance, but it's like I told you — there's something there."

"There's nothing there! You just keep babbling about Frownhopper lines and telling me they mean something!"

"Fraunhoffer," Hunk corrected, "And we'll find out once the dust settles."

"Uh-uh," Lance answered, "I'm not-"

"What are you doing out here?" Keith asked, interrupting.

Shiro rubbed a hand on the back of his neck, not sure how to answer that.

"I told you!" Lance answered, "I was swimming! And I'm gonna keep swimming, if Hunk didn't _blow up my swimming hole_."

"I was talking to Shiro!" Keith snapped.

"Yeah, I know," Shiro said, jumping in before Lance could snap back, "I just come out here sometimes to clear my head. I used to come out here to get away from home and get it all out of my head, but now-"

"Oh, yeah, I heard about your mom," Keith said, "I'm sorry, man."

"What happened to your mom?" Hunk asked.

Suddenly a voice screeched out from above them. " _What_ do you idiots think you're doing?" Crazy Girl asked, "Do you have any idea what that explosion could have done to my equipment?" She was on the top of the ridge above the cave entrance, her equipment packed up in her backpack, and as soon as she finished the question, she clambered down onto a ledge closer to them and the whole side of the mountain seemed to rumble.

"Shit," Keith said.

"Yeah, that's not good," Hunk said, "I think it's gonna cave."

Crazy Girl was frozen in place, but the rumbling noise hadn't stopped.

"We've gotta get her down!" Lance said, dropping his argument with the others.

Shiro looked frantically around, but there was nothing he could think of to do. Except — "Jump, Crazy Girl! I'll catch you!"

"Crazy Girl?" Keith asked.

The girl looked around herself one last time, like she was hoping for any solution but that one. She couldn't think of one either. She jumped.

Shiro caught her, surprised by how light she was, even with a backpack full of whatever it was she always brought with her. She was almost as light as his mom had been, at the end, and that was not what he needed to be thinking about right now. The rumbling was louder, and the ledge Crazy Girl had jumped from was starting to crumble, dropping large pieces that were already dangerous.

"Run!" Lance shouted.

None of them needed any more encouragement. Shiro took off as fast as he could, Crazy Girl still cradled in his arms, and the boys weren't far behind him. They made it out of the collapse zone just in time, and then came to a halt together, panting as they turned to look at the damage.

"See, _this_ ," Lance said, still trying to catch his breath, " _This_ is why I told you we couldn't just _blow up a mountain_ because you wanted to see what was underneath it. But did you listen to me?"

"I know man, I'm sorry. The explosion was a little bit bigger than intended."

"Wait, you _meant_ to blow up the cave?" Shiro asked.

"No! No, that would be crazy. I meant to blow up the _back wall_ of the cave. There's something underneath it. Something not totally earthly. I can tell. It's emitting radiation. Fraunhoffer lines."

Crazy Girl smacked Shiro in the shoulder just hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to really hurt. "Put me down! What do you mean 'not earthly'? What kind of radiation are you talking about?"

Hunk gave some kind of a technical answer, and before Shiro knew it, he and Crazy Girl were talking a mile a minute, bouncing words Shiro didn't understand off each other at top speed.

By the time Crazy Girl started pulling out her equipment, Lance and Keith had given up on listening to them, and were back at their argument.

"I can't _believe_ you helped him blow up a mountain! Aren't you in enough trouble already?"

"Ok, it's not like he _told_ me he was gonna do that!"

"What _did_ he tell you?"

"I dunno, he told me he could get the ankle monitor off my leg. He told me he could get my speeder back for a night. I thought I was just gonna give him a ride and then I could do my own thing."

"You have an ankle monitor?" Shiro asked.

"Yeah, I'm supposed to be confined to quarters. But it's ok. Hunk fixed it."

"Oh, so now you're roping Hunk into your juvenile delinquent triple-probation?" Lance accused.

"Hey, it was Hunk's idea!"

Hunk and the girl were getting louder and more excited, but Shiro still couldn't make much out of what they were saying until suddenly they were both clambering to their feet and shoving Crazy Girl's equipment back into her backpack again.

"Where are you guys going?" Shiro asked them.

"Back to the cave site!" Crazy Girl said, "Hunk's right! There's gotta be something there! _And_ it explains why I always got all those extra readings when I was up there. I think I've been hearing actual alien radio chatter — or, not _radio_ radio, but the equivalent. I think whatever's there is magnifying the signal."

"Wait, you've been hearing _aliens_?" Keith asked.

"I must have been! They kept saying something about 'Voltron,' but I couldn't find anything about that no matter what I googled, so it being alien fits. Kind of. Come on! We've gotta go see what's in that cave."

"I'm in," Keith said.

Shiro suddenly half remembered a story Keith had told when they were little about how his mom was really a space alien, but that couldn't be what was motivating him now, could it? That had just been juvenile wishful thinking by a boy without a mom. Right?

Either way, Keith, Hunk, and the girl were already moving back toward where the cave had been, and when Lance flung his head back with a sigh and then charged after them, shouting for Hunk to wait up, Shiro let the group's momentum pull him along, too.

Shiro kept an eye on the walls as soon as they'd entered the cave, hanging back so he could get out if they started to cave again, but Hunk and Crazy Girl went straight for the back of the cave, moving the crumbled rocks out of the way of the back wall like there had never been a collapse at all. He got closer to them, in case something happened.

As soon as he'd cleared enough of the rocks, Hunk reached forward over the pile, stretching his arms farther than Crazy Girl could and leaning into the wall. He swiped a hand across the wall itself, brushing away the dust to reveal a strange surface, almost like glass.

Crazy Girl climbed onto the rocks themselves, light footed and certain, and joined him. "There's something embedded in this wall!"

She started wiping the dust away, too, revealing a set of keys, five of them, in a neat row. Shiro felt a weird tingling run through him at the sight of them, and from the way Lance and Keith abruptly stopped their bickering, he suspected they'd felt it too.

"Whoa," Lance said, "What _are_ those?"

"I don't know," Crazy Girl answered, "But we've gotta get them out."

She started scratching at the wall, but it was obvious that wasn't going to do anything. Shiro looked around, hoping to find something better and did — there was a pickaxe sticking out of Hunk's trunk back by the cave entrance. He hurried back and got it.

"Stand back, Crazy Girl," he said, "I've got it."

The girl turned and fixed him with a glare. "Why do you keep calling me that? I'm not crazy!"

Shiro blushed. "Sorry. It's just, I've seen you out here a lot, and I didn't know your name."

"It's Katie," she said, "But my friends call me Pidge."

"Nice to meet you, Pidge," he said, feeling awkward.

"Yeah, _you_ can call me Katie."

Shiro blushed again. "If you'll move out of the way, I'll get the keys."

As soon as he mentioned the keys out loud, he felt the tingling start back again, and Pidge moved quickly out of the way.

A few blows with the pick had the keys tumbling out onto the floor, the glass-like stone around them shattering when they hit the ground, so that the keys themselves were out in the open air. The tingling feeling intensified, and from the way the others clustered silently around, he thought they must feel it, too.

His hand almost itched to touch one of the keys, and when he couldn't resist the urge anymore, he reached out and grabbed the blue one. The others seized keys at the same time, Keith taking the black one, Lance the red, Hunk the yellow, and Pidge the green.

As soon as he touched the key, a vision flashed in front of his eyes. There were five lions, and he could feel the blue one calling to him, like she was his, before they faded, replaced by a huge robot with glowing eyes.

Pidge gasped beside him. "Voltron!"

The last thing he saw before the vision faded was what looked like a large entryway, framed all in white. His brain supplied the word "castle," but it couldn't be a castle. It wasn't made of stone, and it looked like it was buried underground. But then he heard a roar, and he knew the blue lion was inside. She was waiting for him.

The vision faded, and for a moment, Shiro felt shaken.

"Whoa," Lance said.

"Yeah," Hunk agreed.

"We're definitely gonna go find the castle, right?" Pidge asked.

"Definitely," Keith declared, agreeing for all of them.

Shiro was ok with that. Whatever this was, whatever was happening, the lion had taken hold of him, and he knew he had to find her. He'd do anything to find her. And he had nothing left to keep him here.

Shiro closed his eyes for a moment, leaning into that feeling of connection to Blue. It was like she was right there, in the back of his mind, a living presence who already loved him and kept calling for him. He knew he wouldn't really be able to rest until he found her. He knew he wouldn't want to. He knew the others wouldn't, either. Not if it was like this for them.

He'd thought earlier that he didn't want to be alone, that it wasn't what he needed anymore, not after everything, not after his mother's funeral two months ago. Now he wasn't alone. And he had a deep, clear, certain feeling that he never would be again.

He hurried to catch up with the rest of the group, following Keith out of the cave and along the ridge. Toward the castle. Toward Voltron. Toward not being alone. He took a deep breath, like he always did out here in the clear outdoors, and his breath came easier than ever. It was time to go home. Home to a new home. Home to new friends and new people and _Blue_.

Shiro smiled.


End file.
